Alsarah and the Nubatones bring a new twist on traditional East African pop. As Alsarah tells it: “Tradition is not a frozen thing, it’s not a stagnant thing. Tradition is merely a conversation between you and the future about your past.” They perform at TEDGlobal 2017: Builders. Truth-Tellers. Catalysts., on Wednesday, August 30, 2017, in Arusha, Tanzania. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED

Human potential is a double-edged sword; it can be turned to great good or great evil. This session is about the discovery, liberation and channeling of human potential in ways that make the world around us a better place.

But first, Alsarah & the Nubatones introduce us to East African retro-pop. As Alsarah says from stage mid-set: “This music is not traditional, but it is rooted. It’s pop, but it’s got feelings. It’s got messages. It knows where it’s come from and it’s ready to go anywhere it needs to go.”

Today is a joyful homecoming for William Kamkwamba who stole the hearts of the TED audience with his windmill here in Arusha in 2007 when he was only 14 years old. Since then, he’s co-written a book, graduated from African Leadership Academy and Dartmouth, travelled the world, is working with farmers to get their crops into supermarkets, and more. “My dream,” says Kamkamba, “is to continue the work I’m doing, trying to find the ways of solving some of the problems people are facing in my community or the world in general.”

Decades of study exists on mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit. Nonetheless, malaria still plagues hundreds of millions of people every year, and kills more than a million, mostly children under the age of five, in sub-Saharan Africa.We still know very little about mosquitoes, says Fredros Okumu, who catches mosquitoes for a living. Okay, so he catches them to study them. As mosquitoes build resistance to insecticides, new ways must be found to control their populations. After some rather intense study of mosquito biology (that involves baring legs in 12-hour shifts to invite the insects), Fredros’ research team have developed some rather unconventional methods for targeting and culling the malaria vector that has been described as the most dangerous animal on the planet.

Fredros Okumu studies the deadliest animal in the world: the mosquito. We know very little about this vector for malaria and other diseases, even as it develops resistance to our pesticides. (And real talk, one way you study mosquitos is to let yourself get bitten over and over.) Photo: Ryan Lash / TED

By building local scientific capacity, Africans can find solutions to the continent’s problems, says audience member Kevin Njabo, who takes the stage to admit that he almost became one of the four of five Africans who never return to the continent after an education abroad. He urges more people to do so: “For every skilled African who returns home, nine jobs are created in the formal or informal sector.”

Africa is a young continent: 41% percent of the population is under 15, according to the UN’s population division. But as the young demographic explodes, jobs have not kept up. Kola Masha is concerned that it could spell disaster if these people do not find opportunities to make a decent life for themselves. In 2012, Masha created a company called Babban Gona to explore if it was possible to use agriculture as an engine to unlock opportunities for economic advancement to young people in Nigeria. Over the past four years, Babban Gona has brought together a grassroots farmer learning community, professional management and investment to reach more than 20,000 farmers and help them not only be successful on the land but also multiply their profits from previous levels.

What do you do when you return to your country and visit the library, but can’t find books written by your country’s own people? Well, if you are Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, you become a publisher. Which is obviously not a cakewalk (brief sidebar), but has to be done. The reason? Archives are not value-free, and whoever controls them controls the narrative. It is one thing for writers to write. But in the end, the ones who control the means of production and distribution have outsized amounts of control over whether those stories will see the light of day, or be received in a meaningful way. And most important, they determine what will be seen by future generations. Bakare-Yusuf became a publisher to create the African archival future and contribute to the global archive of ideas. To make sure that the archive of African stories is not controlled by the West, or by African men. She hopes that in 500 years, when people (or aliens?) look into the archives of Africa, they will find a diverse array of texts written by African men and women.

Bibi Bakare-Yusuf started a publishing company to preserve African texts — and to deliver them safely to future generations. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED

]]>36778134771_2a98dc651a_omrbankoleNuclear fission reactors, Africa’s Einsteins and the healing power of nature: A recap of “Beauty and the Brain,” All-Stars Session 2 at TED2014http://blog.ted.com/nuclear-fission-reactors-africas-einsteins-and-the-healing-power-of-nature-a-recap-of-beauty-and-the-brain-all-stars-session-2-at-ted2014/
http://blog.ted.com/nuclear-fission-reactors-africas-einsteins-and-the-healing-power-of-nature-a-recap-of-beauty-and-the-brain-all-stars-session-2-at-ted2014/#commentsTue, 18 Mar 2014 22:00:26 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=87067[…]]]>

Dan Gilbert. Photo: Bret Hartman

By Liz Jacobs and Thu-Huong Ha

Our brains work in mysterious ways. They make us laugh, they make us cry, and sometimes, they make us 19-year old geniuses. The 11 speakers in this All-Stars session specialize in areas of the brain as diverse as personality, trauma and gender, but they all agree: Our minds matter.

Below, read a detailed recap of each talk given in this session:

What if there were one amazing substance that was cheap, had no side effects, reduced stress, boosted creativity—and you couldn’t OD on it? As it happens, there is: Nature. Marine biologist Tierney Thys is interested in the calming, healing effects that images of nature have on the brain. Working with TED speaker Nalini Nadkarni’s team, she’s supplying nature images to an Oregon prison. Preliminary results look promising. If we could understand the effects of seeing nature on the neurological level, she suggests, we could optimize the creation of nature imagery to maximize mental health. That’s why she’s working on another project to measure EEG in response to beautiful nature photography. It’s a new discipline she calls neurobiophilia.

Why do we make decisions that our future selves so often regret? Happiness psychologist Dan Gilbert is interested in how much our personality, preferences and values change over the course of a lifetime. It’s a theme Gilbert has discussed in his previous talks on happiness and decision-making, but his new research shows that while we think we are the person we will always be, we actually change quite a lot over the course of our lifetime, even into old age. The only constant in life is change — even when it comes to ourselves.

At TEDGlobal 2012, Jane McGonigal gave a talk about her game SuperBetter, which helped her recover from a severe brain injury. Since then she has become obsessed with how games can help people’s mental health. She offers four recent examples of the power of gaming:

SnowWorld: This is a 3D virtual reality game that has be able to reduce pain in severe burn cases by 30 to 50 percent, making it more effective than morphine;

Tetris: Oxford psychologists showed that playing Tetris directly following a trauma blocks the brain from forming visual memories. By hijacking the visual processing center of the brain, Tetris can help with PTSD;

Project Tree: This is a game in which players use chain saws to cut down a tree and experience haptic feedback. After playing the game for two minutes subjects showed they would change their behavior for one week, using 25 percent fewer paper products.

SuperBetter: In a recent University of Pennsylvania control trial, McGonical’s own SuperBetter was able to reduce 6 symptoms of depression in 6 weeks of play.

In 2008, physicist and education activist Neil Turok wished to find the next Einstein in Africa. Since winning the TED Prize, Turok has made incredible strides connecting Africa’s young scientists with the best lecturers in the world. At his African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, which now has four centers across the continent and a fifth opening later this year, students have found incredible resources and support to pursue their mathematical dreams. Turok is joined on the stage with two of his students, Kidist Zeleke and Martial Mbah, who are applying their math and science foundation to cutting-edge research in physics and medicine.

Emily Levine. Photo: Ryan Lash

After Emily Levine gave her kooky TED2002 talk, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Says Levine, “It has brought me in touch with reality.” She was producing too much human growth hormone; she broke her back; it was only three months ago that she started walking again. And yet. There was only one thing for the self-labeled “brainiac comedian” to do: make a movie. She gives a preview of her new film, Emily @ the Edge of Chaos: A Movie About Change.

Psychologist Phillip Zimbardo is worried about men. He sees them failing socially, academically and with women — and he’s had these concerns since he talked about the demise of guys back in 2011. In the three years since, he hasn’t seen much improvement in the male condition; now, he pinpoints the causes on missing fathers and overexposure to video games. It will take a village — mothers and fathers, government programs, healthcare and school curriculum redesigns — to refine masculinity and remind men to get back into the real world.

In a Q&A with session host Guy Raz, 19-year-old Taylor Wilson talks about the progress of his small nuclear fission reactors. And he’s close — says Wilson, it’s no longer a physics problem, just a manufacturing problem. Wilson says his reactors are five to 10 years from market, and as little as three years from prototype. Distributed generation is the future, he says, because it’s more efficient and reliable, and renewables are pro-distribution. The goal is micro: for every city, town and house to have its own generator. The only thing that’s needed now, says Taylor, is base load power. Raz points out that Taylor decided not to go to college to start his own company; has that been hard? Says Taylor, it was a difficult decision, but science really allows him to stay a kid forever. And don’t worry, he still goes to parties.

When neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had a massive stroke, her life changed forever. She transitioned from being a left-brained scientist to a right-brained person more in touch with her emotions, and those of others. She had no idea when she shared her story on the TED stage back in 2008 that 15 million people would watch her talk. Since then, she’s founded Jill Bolte Taylor BRAINS, a nonprofit that promotes brain awareness and appreciation. And she’s learned to harness her strengths as a right-brained person: it’s influenced her teaching style and her outlook on life. “Our first job as human beings is to love one another and come into the world through compassion, love and openness,” she says. “TED has changed my life and helped me become the person I am today.” A standing O from a teary crowd.

William Kamkwamba. Photo: Ryan Lash

William Kamkwamba, aka “the boy who harnessed the wind,” spoke at TEDGlobal 2007 about the windmill he built in his village in Malawai as a fourteen-year-old. Today he is back at TED to talk about his educational journey since then. Says Kamkwamba, at the time he was forced to drop out of school because his parents couldn’t afford his school fees. Following his talk, generous supporters helped him go back to school, this time in South Africa. Now, 7 years, 11 weeks, and 2 days after giving his first talk, Kamkwamba is about to graduate from Dartmouth College. He still devotes much of his time to helping his community, installing solar panels and computers in the school he was forced to leave; starting a soccer team for his village; running a minivan transport business; installing solar water pumps; and of course sharing his skills and knowledge with the community so they can work on their own projects.

Taylor Wilson has been called “The Boy Who Played With Fusion” by Popular Science magazine. At age 9, Wilson stunned tour guides at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with his complex understanding of rocket science. At 12, he set out to make a “star in a jar.” By 14, Wilson had become the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion with a working reactor. Built in his parents’ garage, the deuterium-hurling device is now housed in the physics department of the University of Nevado, Reno.

At TED2013, Wilson made his second appearance on the TED stage, above. Now 19, he arrived with a bold new idea — a way to make nuclear energy safe and portable, on a scale where it has the potential to address the global energy crisis. In today’s talk, Wilson shares his latest innovation — Small Modular Fission Reactors. These reactors are small, meaning that they can be built in factories and shipped around the globe. They run on already-molten material, so meltdowns won’t be an issue. They’re installed three meters underground, making them hard to tamper with, and yet, in the event of a disaster, the core can be drained to a tank underneath, stopping the reaction. And while traditional nuclear power plants run for 18 months before needing refueling, the small-scale versions could run for up to 30 years, after which they could be sealed for discarding.

To hear how these reactors work — and a few potential applications, from bringing carbon-free energy to the developing world to propelling rockets into space — watch this talk.

A year ago, at TED2012, Wilson took the TED stage to talk about the nuclear fusion reactor he created in his basement. “I would like to make the case that nuclear fusion will be … our energy future,” he says in this talk, “Yup, I built a nuclear fusion reactor.” “I’d also like to make the case that kids can really change the world.”

Kamkwamba set out to make a windmill to bring electricity to his family’s home in rural Malawi. He got the basic plans from a library book, reimagining the design out of spare parts, like a bicycle frame and plastic pipes. Kamkwamba made significant alterations in the design to improve upon it, adding an extra blade to increase the windmill’s power production. In the end, the windmill created 12 watts of energy – enough to power four lightbulbs and two radios in his family’s home. At TEDGlobal 2009, he returned to the stage to tell the story in more detail in the talk “How I harnessed the wind.”

After his TED experience, Kamkwamba set his sights on building a bigger windmill to pump water and power irrigation for his entire village. Kwambama’s story was recently the subject of the documentary William and the Windmill, which won the Grand Jury Award at SXSW.

Bill Gross, the founder of Idealab, is an adult now. But in his talk from TED2003, he revealed that he started his first energy company — called Solar Devices — when he was 15 years old, building on what he learned in school about how parabolas could concentrate rays of light onto a single point. At the height of the gas shortage in 1973, Gross developed his own design for a Stirling engine in metal shop.

“I sold the plans for this engine and for this dish in the back of Popular Science magazine, for $4 each,” he says in this talk, “Bill Gross on new energy.” “I earned enough money to pay for my first year of Caltech.”

Want more talks with ideas for energy (regardless of the speaker’s age)? Watch the TED playlist “The End of Oil.” It begins with Wilson’s talk about his nuclear fusion reactor, continues with Donald Sadoway sharing the missing link to renewable energy, and continues with eight more great ideas for moving beyond our reliance on oil.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/3-teenage-thinkers-with-big-ideas-for-energy/feed/11Taylor-Wilson-at-TED2013kateted“William and the Windmill” wins Grand Jury Award at SXSWhttp://blog.ted.com/william-and-the-windmill-wins-grand-jury-award-at-sxsw/
http://blog.ted.com/william-and-the-windmill-wins-grand-jury-award-at-sxsw/#commentsWed, 13 Mar 2013 13:45:25 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=72836[…]]]>Last night at SXSW, William and the Windmill was awarded one of the festival’s top two honors, taking home Grand Jury Award for Documentary Feature.
William Kamkwamba: How I harnessed the wind
The film tells the story of TED Speaker William Kamkwamba, who has come to be known by the title of his memoir, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. At age 14, Kamkwamba built a windmill out of junk parts, adapting a design he saw in a library book in order to provide electricity for his family in rural Malawi. This incredible feat of engineering caught our attention, and he was invited to speak at TED Global 2007. His 6-minute talk, called “How I harnessed the wind,” was life-changing and catapulted him from regular teenager to international energy superstar.

William and the Windmill, directed by Ben Nabors and starring TED’s own Tom Rielly, who became Kamkwamba’s mentor, follows Kamkwamba’s journey from his home in Malawi to Dartmouth College, reflecting on the highs and lows of living between two very different cultures. As IndieWire writes in its rave review of the film, “Kamkwamba’s scientific achievement speaks for itself, but the attention he received in its wake is a thornier issue that Ben Nabors turns into a fascinating look at the tricky balancing act of third-world activism.”

William and the Windmill received recognition last night at SXSW alongside Short Term 12, winner of the Grand Jury Award for Narrative Feature. Below, check out stills from William and the Windmill, courtesy of Nabors. And stay tuned to the TED Blog for a Q&A with Kamkwamba.

Directed by Ben Nabors, William and the Windmill begins with Kamkwamba’s incredible feat of engineering but focuses on what happened after — as Kamkwamba becomes one young man straddling two cultures. It follows him as he travels to TEDGlobal, meets with renewable energy experts in the United States, enrolls in a pan-African high school, publishes a book and founds the nonprofit, Moving Windmills, which aims to bring schools, clean water, solar power and scholarship programs to his area. The film even follows Kamkwamba on a media tour, as he films segments on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Good Morning America.

William and the Windmill is an exploration of how ingenuity ripples out through the world, and the intense pressure that builds as this happens. As Kamkwamba says in the trailer, “My pressure comes when I’m thinking about, ‘Yeah, I did this and I did this. So, now what next?’ Maybe people out there, they’re waiting. Expecting a lot of things from me.”

When Nabor and TED’s own Tom Rielly took to Kickstarter in 2011 to raise the funds to edit this film, pledgers donated more than $111K. So if you’re at SXSW, make sure to see it. And stay tuned to the TED Blog for a Q&A with Kamkwamba and information on when you can see this doc.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/new-documentary-at-sxsw-traces-william-kamkwambas-journey-from-rural-malawi-to-the-ted-stage/feed/4katetedHarnessing the power of reading: Q&A with illustrator Elizabeth Zunonhttp://blog.ted.com/harnessing-the-power-of-reading-qa-with-elizabeth-zunon/
http://blog.ted.com/harnessing-the-power-of-reading-qa-with-elizabeth-zunon/#commentsSat, 21 Jan 2012 00:27:20 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=54371[…]]]>Yesterday, TED Fellow William Kamkwamba debuted an illustrated children’s version of his memoir The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, co-written with Bryan Mealer and illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon. Since its publication in 2009, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind has been printed in 17 editions internationally. For this Young Readers edition, for ages 6 and up, Kamkwamba’s story is accompanied by Zunon’s uniquely subtle mix of oil and collage.

In conjunction with the launch of the book’s children’s edition, Kamkwamba’s NGO, Moving Windmills Project, is collaborating with the Pearson Foundation on an initiative to send up to 10,000 children’s books to Wimbe lending library, near Kamkwamba’s village in Malawi — the place where his story began. Each time the book is read online, the library receives one new book. So far there have been over 7,000 readings completed online. Learn more. Kamkwamba is now a sophomore at Dartmouth majoring in Environmental Sciences.

We caught up with illustrator and former Côte d’Ivoire denizen Elizabeth Zunon to ask her about this beautiful new edition.

What about this story touched you?

I was touched by William’s problem-solving mentality during a crisis. He endured the drought and had to drop out of school, but still figured out a way to piece together a solution with determination and only the materials that he had.

How did you decide the style of the illustrations?

I love combining oil painted portraits and collage elements, so I thought that exploring this style would fit perfectly for this book. I am always collecting pieces of colored and textured paper and fabric, and taking photographs. I thought that literally “building” the illustrations with my own found items would reflect Williams searching and building process as well.

How do you think your style and William’s story work together to create a new narrative?

I think that they both demonstrate the process of collecting, altering and piecing together disparate parts. Trusting in oneself and in one’s idea, even before it has been completed or is actually successful, is the key to satisfaction. Having the artwork demonstrate the same notions that the story does only enforces the narrative.

What do you hope young readers will learn from this story?

I hope that they’ll learn that you can build your dreams with the pieces that are already around you — that every positive and negative experience you live through is a puzzle piece for the legacy you will leave to others. Hope, courage and endless possibilities live everywhere!

The TED Blog met with William Kamkwamba shortly after the publication of his autobiography, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Here, he answers questions about his book, his life story, his plans for the future, and offers some inspiration to others who face poverty and struggle to achieve a dream.

How does it feel to visit a place like New York City, after coming from a place filled with poverty and famine — the place you illustrated so unforgettably in your recently-published autobiography?

There are some things people here take for granted — things that people who live in other parts of the world, like Africa, like my country, Malawi, don’t have. People in Malawi sometimes do not have clean water. Here, people have clean water all the time. When I see this city, and all of the things people have, and I think about all the people in my home country who do not have enough food, I just think, “Oh my God.”

After living through the famine, facing death by starvation, and watching many people in your village starve and develop diseases like cholera, will you ever get used to having clean water and food?

I will always be thinking of the difference between this place and the place I came from. I will always be looking back at the things I’ve gone through, thinking of the struggling people I’ve seen. But maybe if things get better there, I will be able to stop thinking about the difference.

Much of the book centers around your fascination with electricity, and harnessing energy from the environment with low-cost components. Are you still studying electrical engineering?

Yes. Right now I am studying at a high school level. I plan on going into engineering — especially mechanical engineering. I will also be studying electrical engineering.

When you have your degree — or between then and now — what sorts of machines or systems are you planning to build?

Right now I am interested in building a drilling machine. I want to build a machine that can drill wells for water. With this problem of water in many places in Africa, we need to find a solution for how you can dig wells so you can be pumping water from deeper places.

I want to bring clean water to people who do not have it. What I’m trying to do now is think of ways to build a well-drilling machine that is low-cost so people in rural areas can afford it. People in rural places could use the water for irrigation, or for drinking.

Will your well-drill design require electricity?

No. You can either use a small gas engine that does not need much gas, or you can operate it manually. It will be simple. The people can use power if they want, or they can use it by hand if they want.

As I said before, my main plan is to see how I can bring clean water to poor people. Once I finish with the drill, I want to design a pump that can be inserted into the wells they have drilled, so they can use it to pump their water to use for drinking or irrigation.

In your book, you emphasize the importance of maize and tobacco to your family’s farm. With an easy-to-come-by water source and an irrigation system, what else could you grow?

With an irrigation system, you could also grow different vegetables and fruits; you could grow peanuts and soybeans.

By the way — do you have any favorite foods in here in the US?

Yes, but it is hard to say anything specific. In my country, we have the same, same, same, same food to eat, all the time. So, to name one specific food as my favorite is very difficult for me. Most of the food I have tasted from different countries I like. I like pizza. I like cheeseburgers. (Laughs.)

One thing you talk about in your book is the limited extent to which you had interacted with anything outside of your village. Until you were much older, you had never even visited Lake Malawi, which was only hours’ travel away from your home. What did you think of big cities like New York before you visited?

People in my village had this mindset that in big cities like New York, if you are lost or without directions, no one will help you. The first time I came here, I tried to make sure not to walk by myself, because it would be difficult for me if I got lost. But people will help you. The other day I was walking and a man asked me for directions, and I helped him.

Before I came, people always told me it was cold here. When it’s cold in Malawi you can still wear a t-shirt or a long-sleeve shirt. When I came here, I didn’t bring warm clothes. The airport was heated, and when I arrived I said, “This is hot, it’s not cold.” But then when I stepped outside into the air — whoosh, I was freezing! Then I said, “Oh my God, this is very cold.” It was the coldest day for me. I couldn’t believe that it could be that cold.

In your book, there’s a funny story about an experiment you did to try to capture and utilize an unusual, low-cost energy source for cooking. Tell me that story.

Once people in my village found out that I had managed to make electricity with my windmill, people asked me if they could use the electricity for cooking. But there was not enough power from the windmill to use to cook. Also, if I were going to use electricity to cook, I would need to find a cooking coil. But I couldn’t find those types of things.

In one of my science books, I saw they were talking about bio-gas — the ways you can take waste and make energy. It showed a way you can take cow poop and put it in a hot tank, and then you can wait for some time until gas is created. You can then burn the gas for power.

I wasn’t patient enough to wait for a couple of weeks to wait to see what would happen. I wanted to see right away. I said to myself, I can do it faster, instead of waiting for a long time. If what is needed in the bio gas tank is heat, then I can put goat’s poop in a small tank and heat it to make the bio-gas faster. (Laughs.)

So I took one of my mother’s pots and put the goat poop in it. Then I took it and boiled it. I was hoping that the steam that was coming from the pot would be bio gas. I tried to light it to cook with it, but it didn’t work.

My mother was not around at that time — but when she came back she asked me, “What are you doing?” (Laughs.) I said, “I’m boiling sweet potatoes.” She didn’t believe it.

So, that experiment failed.

What did that incident teach you?

Sometimes you can fail in an experiment. But if you fail, you still don’t stop observing that thing, looking for a better way. I am still looking at systems for cooking, but next time I will be patient.

In the beginning of your book, you tell the story of how your father came to meet, and marry, your mother. If I remember, he saw her in the market and said, “Marry me.” By the way, have you been seeing anyone?

Right now, no. Not yet. (Laughs.) But in the future, yes. There’s no hurry.

Are you similar to your father?

In some ways, yes. My father is a strong man. He used to drink a lot. (Laughs.) He would make some trouble, sometimes fight. But no fighting for me. (Laughs.)

One thing that has helped me to become patient and cool is that I grew up with sisters. At school, if some guys would pick on me, I would have no one to defend me. They would say, “Hey! William! If you have money, give it to us!” just because they knew that I couldn’t do anything about it. As I grew up, I learned to say to someone, “These guys are bothering me.”

Being an outsider is a big theme in your book — from bullies like those at school, to those who called you crazy for trying to build a windmill. How did you manage to stay focused on your windmill, even while people were calling you crazy?

To encourage myself, I would look at the picture of the windmill in the book, and I would tell myself, “Somewhere, someone did this thing. If somebody did this thing, I can also do it.” Even then, with people saying I was crazy, I’d say, “OK, say what you’re going to say, but I’m still going to do this thing.” I would not accept to stop doing this thing because of what people were saying.

I believe that people do this all of the time, when somebody is doing a new thing. I remembered Noah in the Bible. When he was making the Ark, people were laughing at him. When I was making the windmill, people were laughing, but I new exactly what I was doing. I had the vision in my mind. I knew I was going to do make a thing that would look like this, act like this.

What do those people say now, seeing your success with the windmill?

They say, “Ah, we just thought you were crazy because we had never seen such a thing in our lives!” When I told them I was building a windmill, they had no idea what a windmill was. I also think people thought I was crazy because I was going into the junkyard, looking through the garbage. (Laughs.)

I had no idea what exactly TED was all about, or what to expect. It was also my first time to fly in an airplane or to be away from my home. I was scared, saying to myself, What exactly am I going to do? I was sitting here at TED, watching people talking, not understanding anything.

I had heard about computers before, but only of the type that has a screen that looks like old televisions. In my mind, the desktop computer was what all computers looked like. But it was the first time I had ever seen or heard about a laptop. When I was told that this small thing was a computer, I said, “What?” (Laughs.) “This is a computer? The computer I know of has a biiiig screen! Someone cannot put one in a small bag.”

Then my mentor Tom [Rielly] asked me if I had ever seen the Internet. I said, “No, I have never seen it.” I had heard about the Internet on the radio. People were saying many things about it. But I had no idea about what it could do. So, when Tom told me I could find any information on the Internet, the first thing I did was search Google for windmills. I was amazed that I could find pictures and information — even instructions about how to build windmills. When I built my windmill I just used a book with pictures! I was amazed. Everything I needed to learn had been hidden in the Internet the whole time!

Since you built your windmill, have others in Malawi built windmills?

Yes. There is a man who built a windmill. He hasn’t yet hooked it up to generate electricity, but he has managed to make the windmill part. There are many people who want me to build them a windmill. But because I’m busy with school, I can’t go and help. I’m planning to teach other people how to do it, so if those people want a windmill, they can build one. I have taught my cousin so he can build one now. I have also taught another cousin to do it. More people are waiting to learn.

What was it like telling your whole life story for the first time? You had to look back at a lot of painful experiences, such as one heartbreaking story about your childhood dog.

It was great, but there were some times — remembering the saddest stories — when it was very tough. But at the same time, I was remembering happy, funny stories that happened to me. It was a lot of different moments mixing, things I’ve gone through that were good and bad. Talking about a lot of my life was relaxing, in a way.

Is there anything you regret that happened or that you did in the past?

Yes. I regret the time when I got beaten up. A young guy beat me. I started the fight. I started it for no reason at all. I wanted to fight just so I could test my strength. I regret that I tried to hurt somebody for no reason — just to look for a fight. I guess maybe it was because I was young.

And what is your favorite moment from your story?

One thing that makes me happy to remember is hunting. I am also happy when I think about making toy cars. We also used to make a toy where we could pull each other, like a car. And, of course, the part where I finally hooked up my windmill. I will always remember the time when it was first working: “Chh! Chh!” It was amazing. That makes me happiest.

I would tell most young people that in life you can go through many difficulties, but if you know what you want to do, if you can focus, and work, then in the end, you will end up doing it. No matter what happens, if you don’t give up, you will still succeed. People can say all kinds of things, but if you know what you’re doing, in the end, you will do it. Everything is possible.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/how_my_windmill/feed/4matthewtoastWilliamKamkwamba_interview.jpgHow I harnessed the wind: William Kamkwamba on TED.comhttp://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_how_i_harnessed_the_wind
http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_how_i_harnessed_the_wind#commentsWed, 23 Sep 2009 09:28:33 +0000http://blog-staging.ted.com/2009/09/how_i_harnessed/[…]]]>At age 14, in poverty and famine, a Malawian boy built a windmill to power his family’s home. Now at 22, William Kamkwamba, who speaks at TED, here, for the second time, shares in his own words the moving tale of invention that changed his life. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2009, July 2009, in Oxford, UK. Duration: 5:59)

William Kamkwamba took the stage this morning to tell the story of his young and remarkable life. He explains that two years ago he stood on the TED stage in Arusha, Tanzania and spoke about a windmill that he built himself. That experience, he says, changed his life. Before that, he had never left Malawi and he had never seen the Internet. Kamkwamba tells the audience that in his first appearance at TED his English was not good enough to share his story himself. He recalls saying only a few words

He begins to tell us about his life. “I was just a simple farmer in a country of poor farmers,” he says. There were seven siblings in his family, and he was the only boy. In 2001, there was an awful famine in Malawi. His family ate one meal per day, at night. “We dropped down to nothing,” he explains. In Malawi they must fees to attend secondary school. Kamkwamba’s family could not afford it, so he was forced to drop out. “It was a future I couldn’t accept,” he says. Determined to do anything to receive education, he went to the library and borrowed books, especially those on physics. He couldn’t read much of the English, so he studied the diagrams.

Eventually, he found book called “Using Energy” that described windmill, and decided that this could be used to help his family. He went to the scrap yard to find material. Kamkwamba laughs that many people, including his mother, said he was crazy. He used a bicycle frame, PVC pipes and all manner of other odds and ends and built his windmill. It powered one light at first, and then he installed three more as well as a circuit breaker and switches.

Soon, he says, queues of people started lining up at his house to charge their mobile phones. “I could not get rid of them,” he smiles. The lines led to bloggers, to reporters and finally to TED. “I had never seen an airplane before and never slept in a hotel.

Kamwaba has a poignant final message. He ends his talk by saying, “To all the people out there like me — to the Africans, and the poor, and the struggling, maybe one day you’ll watch this on the Internet: Trust yourself and believe. Whatever happens, don’t give up.”

William Kamkwamba spoke at TEDGlobal 2007, as a shy young man who’d built his family a windmill from scrap. His story captured the world’s attention. Today he walked onstage with confidence to tell his story from that point to this.

@herbkim Google ‘William Kamkwamba’ – sat next to him at dinner last night having no idea he was gonna blow me & the TED audience away this morning

@CosmoCat William Kamkwamba telling how he decided to built his own wind-powered pump to get water and save himself and his family from starving

@beckyblanton Michael Kamkwamba had a dream, made it happen, self-taught in libraries – built his own windmill from scrap. Hope always finds a way.

@frogdesign And the crowd goes wild. Incredible story about hope and invention in Africa from William Kamkwamba.

@ruthannharnisch #TED Fellow William Kamkwamba tells his powerful story – you’ll have to buy his book, “The Boy WHo Harnessed The Wind”http://bit.ly/OQPUG

Mr. Kamkwamba’s wind obsession started six years ago. He wasn’t going to school anymore because his family couldn’t afford the $80-a-year tuition.

When he wasn’t helping his family farm groundnuts and soybeans, he was reading. He stumbled onto a photograph of a windmill in a text donated to the local library and started to build one himself.

There’s also a great 2-minute video that shows the updates Kamkwamba has made to his family’s home power system, and talks about what’s next for him:

Video: Writer Sarah Childress from the Wall Street Journal talks to William Kamkwamba, a 20-year-old Malawian who built a windmill to power his family’s home.
Image courtesy Wall Street Journal

]]>http://blog.ted.com/william_kamkwam/feed/3tedstaffUnknown.jpegPremiere: William Kamkwamba on building a windmillhttp://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_on_building_a_windmill?language=en
http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_on_building_a_windmill?language=en#commentsWed, 01 Aug 2007 10:45:00 +0000http://blog-staging.ted.com/2007/08/premiere_willia/[…]]]>When he was just 14 years old, Malawian inventor William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts, working from rough plans he found in a library book. In conversation with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Kamkwamba, now 19, tells a moving story of ingenuity and adaptation, and shares his dreams: To build a larger windmill to help with irrigation for his entire village, and to find the funds to go back to school. This talk inspired outpourings of support from the TED community and in the blogosphere. (Recorded June 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania. Duration: 04:23.)